


Found Objects

by tzzzz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Rape Recovery, Starvation, Torture, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzzzz/pseuds/tzzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fire Kate Argent decided to keep Derek and the daughter he'd given her.  Alone, Laura Hale moved to New York and turned her back on the supernatural world.  Six years later, as a punishment for making his own fun in boring Beacon Hills, Stiles ends up with a part-time job as an orderly at Peter Hale's nursing home.  It doesn't take him long to realize that there's more to his favorite patient than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found Objects

It starts with Scott. It usually does. 

“Nothing exciting ever happens around here,” Scott says for what must be the millionth time.

Except this time, instead of telling Scott to shut up, Stiles says, “then we’ll make something exciting happen.”

***

Something exciting turns out to be Scott breaking his wrist falling out of a tree when they’re only at the observation stage of what would be an awesome prank campaign against Mr. Harris.

When his father hears Stiles’s excuse of “we were bored,” he repartees with “then you have too much time on your hands.”

A week later, Stiles is standing in the hallway of the local nursing home, wearing scrubs.

***

“Hello Mr. Hale,” the nurse says, painfully perky. Her lips are blood red and her hair done up like she’s auditioning for the nurse in that famous picture from V-J day. “I’d like to introduce you to our new orderly. His name is Stiles and he’ll take good care of you.”

She stares at Stiles expectantly until he startles with the realization that he’s supposed to talk to one of the vegetables he’s paid to babysit. “Oh, um, yeah, hi, I’m Stiles. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hale.”

The nurse smiles, then grabs Stiles by the shoulder and hustles him to the next room.

***

Peter Hale turns out to be one of Stiles’s favorite patients. Probably because he doesn’t talk and he doesn’t smell like old-person.

“So, anyway, Scott has a huge crush on this new girl, but he didn’t know what to do so he went to run away and accidentally ended up giving her a black eye with his cast. Classic Scott, don’t you think?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. Stiles feeds him a little liquid breakfast through a straw.

“Please stop me from ever getting so far up the ass of my crush that I do something like that over a girl. Or to a guy. Huh, over a guy. That’s the first time I’ve said that outloud. But you’ll keep my secret, won’t you?”

Peter seems sympathetic. It makes Stiles feel only slightly guilty about fantasizing a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ situation with his favorite patient. 

***

Stiles is not good at shaving people, especially not with a straight razor and especially not someone with so much scar tissue on his face. This is why Vlad normally does this, but Vlad’s wife is pushing out yet another tiny terror, so Stiles is on his own.

He knows he’s not good at it, but he’s still surprised when the razer slips and cuts a deep gash into the scar tissue that covers half of Peter’s face.

“Oh my god. I just sliced a patient! I’m so going to get fired for this. And I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’re in there, but I’m so sorry. I’ll get you patched up. Don’t worry.”

Except when Stiles finally locates some gauze, the cut is gone. There’s blood on Peter’s cheek and on Stiles’s hands, but the gash is gone.

“What the hell?”

***

Scott doesn’t believe him. 

“Maybe you imagined it.”

“Imagined it? Then where did the blood come from?”

“Maybe you cut yourself.”

“Yeah, because I’d be less likely to notice I cut myself than cutting the patient.”

“Okay, so what? What does this even mean?”

“That he has magical healing abilities! Like an alien or a vampire or _wolverine_.”

“So if he has magical healing abilities, why is he still in a coma?”

Stiles shrugs. “Psychological trauma? His whole family, including a wife and newborn, died in that fire. Or maybe the injuries were just too much for him to heal.”

Scott turns around in his seat, giving Stiles that stupid guileless doe-eyed look. “Dude, you’re my best friend and I’m not going to doubt that you saw what you think you saw, but you need more evidence if anyone else is going to believe you.”

“McCall! Stilinski!” Harris shouts. “Don’t make me separate you again.”

***

Stiles stares at the blade, gleaming and deadly against the white tiles of the handicapped bathroom. 

“I’m so going to get fired for this,” he says to himself, because deliberately cutting one of the patients? Crazy. Psych ward sadistic.

Stiles puts the blade to the scarred flesh of Peter’s thigh and closes his eyes as he makes the cut to keep himself from fainting. When he rubs away the blood, the wound heals before his eyes, leaving behind a black residue like tar and clean skin where the scars had been.

“Oh god. What the hell _is_ that?”

Peter’s finger twitches for the first time Stiles has ever seen.

“Wait, is this actually helping you?”

Peter doesn’t answer, but there’s tension quivering in his limbs that wasn’t there before.

***

Next time Stiles is staying over at Scott’s house, he volunteers to help Mrs. McCall prepare dinner while Scott is upstairs showering.

“How’s your new job, Stiles?” she asks.

“I appreciate what you do a lot more now,” Stiles admits, because the whole medical field is basically about how much of the gross, disgusting, and stressful you can deal with. 

She smiles so brightly that Stiles realizes for all Scott shows he loves her, he has never really appreciated what she goes through to provide for him. He feels a small twinge of guilt for using her the way he’s about to.

“Actually, I was meaning to ask you about one of my favorite patients. Were you there when they brought in Peter Hale?”

“I was, as a matter of fact. He was a favorite at the hospital also. Everyone who was around then still talks about him.”

“Why?”

“We called him our miracle patient. He had second degree burns over almost his whole body and third degree on most of his left side. Nobody, not even the burn specialist, thought he had any chance of surviving, but he proved us all wrong.”

“But he’s almost catatonic.”

“We all prayed he’d recover enough to live a relatively normal life, but Stiles, when he came in, he didn’t even look human. Sometimes survival is the miracle.”

“Did they ever figure out how?”

“Some of the doctors wanted to do a full study to figure that out, but his niece refused consent.”

***

“Here goes nothing,” Stiles says, white knuckled grip on his purloined scalpel.

Peter doesn’t reply.

The knotted flesh of the scars almost peels off under the blade’s edge, releasing more of the black tar. He hopes the three layers of latex gloves he put on protects him from the stuff. This is some serious X-files shit.

Before he knows it, Stiles has shaved off a few inches of scar tissue on Peter’s side, where it won’t be noticed. It heals almost instantly.

“Okay, if I’m imagining this, then I’m so crazy that I’m probably hallucinating my whole life from a padded room already.”

Peter moans, making Stiles jump back and fall on his ass, narrowly avoiding stabbing the scalpel into his own thigh.

“Holy shit. DId you just make a noise?”

“Kaa...” Peter says.

“Kaa?”

“Ate.”

“You ate?”

“Kaate.”

“Kate?”

“Kate.”

“Huh.” 

Maybe Kate is the niece Mrs. McCall mentioned.

“Okay, Peter. I’ll find Kate.”

Peter’s previous tension subsides. Stiles sees the barest hint of a grin.

***

Except the only contact listed for Peter is one Laura Hale.

So Stiles does the next logical thing and breaks into the archive room at the station while Scott distracts his dad with BBQ ribs.

The case file on the Hale fire is gruesome, but protracted. Both the insurance investigator and the arson specialist declared the fire an accident, despite suspicious circumstances.

No Kate is mentioned.

***

Laura Hale only escaped the fire because she was away at college. Stiles can’t imagine how awful that must have been. He doesn’t want to bring up those memories without cause.

It’s why he waits and entire week and several more “treatments” with Peter before he dials the emergency contact listed in Peter’s file. It’s a New York area code.

“Hello?” She sounds anxious, though her voice is soft and melodic. 

Stiles supposes that there aren’t many reasons for a Beacon Hills number to contact her.

“Hi,” he stammers. “My name is Stiles, um, Orderly Stilinski. I work with your uncle, Peter Hale.”

“Uncle Peter? Is he okay? Has someone hurt him?” If Stiles weren’t the son of a cop, he wouldn’t have noticed, but it’s revealing that her first question is about someone doing something to Peter, not about the normal, tragic but natural end of a person in 24-hour care.

“No. Your uncle is okay. I’m, um, I’m calling because I think he’s getting better.”

“He is?” she marvels. “Can I speak with him?” Also strange, that she would assume that improvement means that Peter is up to speaking.

“Actually, I’m not there right now. I’m not really supposed to be calling you. I, uh, accidentally discovered what I think is a treatment method for your uncle, but it wasn’t exactly authorized. I haven’t told anyone else. I just.... I don’t even know if you’ll believe me. It’s really strange.”

“Trust me, hon, nothing you say could surprise me.”

Stiles bites his lip. She _says_ that, but there’s surprising strange and then there’s _paranormal_ strange. “I don’t think I can tell you over the phone. Look, he’s responsive. Not up for conversation, but responsive enough that I think he’d like to see you. Is there any way you could come out here?”

“He’s spoken?”

“He only really said one thing. Does the name Kate mean anything to you?”

“I’ll book the next flight I can.”

“I don’t think it’s really that urgent. I mean, he’s been in the hospital for years.”

“I’ll be there.”

***

Laura Hale is beautiful. She has dark hair and light, changeable eyes. She’s dressed stylishly, in charcoal grey patterned leggings and an electric blue trenchcoat. Stiles isn’t the only one checking her out. Of course, there’s an ostentatious engagement ring on her finger and when she takes off her jacket, it’s obvious on her petite frame that she’s several months pregnant.

She hugs Stiles immediately when they meet up at Starbucks and keeps her hand on his elbow as she leads him out to her rental car.

The second the door closes, she peels off with far too little caution for a woman with a baby on board. “Tell me, mage, what have you been doing to my uncle?”

“What?” Stiles says, because, yeah, he’s totally a mage, if you count World of Warcraft, but there’s no way she could know that.

She rolls her eyes. “Cut the crap. I can smell it. Electricity and mountain ash. Do you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

She’s crazy. Of course, her whole family was murdered, so it’s not unexpected. She’s pretty enough that people probably let her get away with it. He sizes her up, wondering if she’s kidnapping him. He may be 147 lbs of clumsy, but he could still probably take a 5 foot 3 pregnant lady.

“I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Huh,” she murmurs, not slowing the car down one iota. “You’re not lying.”

***

Stiles waits in the car while Laura checks Peter out for a short walk. Then, when nobody but Stiles is watching, she scoops her uncle up in a deadlift and shoves him in the back seat.

What the hell? Also, pregnant ladies should not be doing that kind of lifting.

“Are you like a bodybuilder or something?”

Laura just snorts and then ignores him, driving them out into the woods. Maybe this is when she’ll murder Stiles. He briefly debates throwing himself out the door of the car, but he can’t just leave Peter with her if she’s as crazy as he thinks she is.

The burnt-out skeleton of the Hale house looms, a reminder of every late-night horror movie Stiles watched trembling when his dad was at work. Laura skids up to it in a scatter of leaves. She doesn’t bother with the wheelchair, just leans Peter up against a moldy wall on the porch.

“Uncle Peter,” she calls, slapping his cheek hard enough to have Stiles reaching forward to restrain her. She throws him off easily. “Uncle Peter, it’s Laura.” Tears of desperation are welling in her eyes, but she refuses to wipe them away. “It’s your niece. Please, Uncle Peter, you’re getting better. The mage says you’re getting better.”

Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he swears that he sees her pale eyes flash a dangerous red.

That’s nothing compared to the way Peter’s scarred face twists and shifts, claws extending from his fingers and a gaping maw filled with the teeth of a predator.

Stiles’s heart leaps in his chest, but he’s never been able to look away, even when he knows he should be running.

“Please,” Peter rasps. His head lolls so he’s focused on Stiles. The plea is unambiguous.

***

Laura hadn’t wasted any time before pushing Stiles up against the door of the old house, demanding. “Whatever you did to help him, do it again.”

Now he’s got a switchblade from Laura’s suitcase in his hand. 

“I don’t see why you can’t do this. I told you how.”

Laura just glares until Stiles pushes the knife down, carving off the scar tissue on Peter’s shoulder. 

Laura growls at the thick black sludge that seeps out of the wound, but she doesn’t look scared, only contemplative.

“Mountain ash. Of course, some powder must have gotten in his wounds. You’d have to be a mage to diffuse it,” she murmurs to herself.

“Okay, lady, I’ve been pretty patient with you and your red eyes and scary teeth and your mystical bullshit, but Stiles will not help you unless you help Stiles understand what the _fuck_ is going on.”

Of all the explanations the doctors considered for their miracle patient, Stiles would bet that werewolf was not among them.

***

The more scar tissue Stiles cuts off, the more Peter can feel the pain. He’s screaming to the empty forest by the time Stiles finishes all the burns below his neck.

“Laura?” he wheezes, falling forward and into his niece's embrace. “Laura, so old.” His shaking hand reaches for her belly. “New pack.”

Laura looks sharply away from his face and the hand on her stomach.

“You _are_ my pack.” Her eyes flash red, his blue. “You’re the only one left.”

Only then does Peter get truly agitated. “No. No. Derek.”

“Derek died in the fire, Uncle Peter. It’s just you and me.”

Peter shakes his head so violently that he almost tips himself over. “Not home. Derek. Kate _Argent_.”

Laura gasps, looking truly shaken for the first time Stiles has seen. “No. It’s not possible.”

Peter’s gaze doesn’t waiver.

***

The next day, Laura demands Peter’s release from the nursing home. The doctors and staff are skeptical, ready to intervene on their patient’s behalf until Laura blurts out that she’s hiring Stiles as Peter’s personal caregiver. Stiles is happy to accept the money for doing not very much.

Once the scar tissue is removed from Peter’s face, his eyes are dazed but bright. He’s actually a very handsome man. Stiles blushes thinking about how many times he’s had to scrub Peter’s junk. 

“Thank you, Stiles,” Peter says, gripping Stiles’s elbows tight. “I was trapped and you set me free.”

Stiles nods, but he can’t reply. Laura might be blunt and brash, but Peter is all slick charm and predation.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask one last favor of you.”

“What?” Stiles trembles, backing away. Laura looks on curiously, but doesn’t move to protect him. 

“Help us find my nephew and put the people who did this to justice.”

Justice is good, but the smirk on Peter’s face isn’t. How could this have been Stiles's favorite patient? “My dad is the sheriff. From the case file, I think he suspected arson. If we could just leave him one clue, I’m sure he would reopen the case.”

Peter stands, moving smoothly behind Stiles to ruffle his unruffleable hair. “I don’t think that will be necessary. We have our own ways of seeking justice. Right, alpha?”

Laura nods in solidarity, but she, too, looks nervous. “Stiles, my brother was your age when the house burned down. I didn’t look for him because they told me he was dead. If he’s still alive, he’s been with the woman who slaughtered children, even human ones, because she hates what we are. I left him in her hands for six years. The alpha is supposed to protect her pack and I--” her voice breaks into a single, tightly leashed sob. “I left him. Please, help us.”

Stiles thinks about Derek, a kid Stiles’s age with Laura’s features. Derek is innocent and he needs to be found, even if the police can’t be the ones to do it. “Okay, but unless it means going to my dad, I don’t see how I could possibly help.”

***

On Monday, Stiles figures out what he can do to help in the form a petite brunette with dimples and a wide smile. She just happens to be attached to his best friend’s mouth.

Stiles likes Allison immediately. Not just because she makes Scott happy, but because underneath the big brown eyes, there’s a tough girl who’s not afraid to run circles around her boyfriend on the climbing wall or help Stiles mess with Jackson during English. It doesn’t hurt that she’s fast friends with Lydia.

Stiles’s heart sinks when he borrows Allison's lab notes during chemistry and finds the name written on the front. Allison _Argent_ , who’s excited that her aunt is coming to town.

“It figures,” Stiles says to himself. Scott and Allison are too busy staring soulfully into each other’s eyes to notice.

***

Laura and Peter are fighting when Stiles arrives at Laura’s suite at the Marriott. She’d given him a key, he rationalizes, even though he’s not expected. But his dad is busy on the bus driver murder and Laura and Peter need to hear about Allison.

“I’m the alpha,” Laura growls, her eyes flashing red and dangerous.

“Then act like it!” Peter shouts back, a stark contrast to the placid, docile Peter of the nursing home.

“I _am_ acting like it. I’m giving you an order: you have to stop. Investigate, but _stop_.”

“I’ll stop when justice is served.”

Laura shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. “We need to find Derek. _That’s_ the priority.”

“Like he was the priority for the six years you were playing house with humans?” 

“What was I _supposed_ to do? I was all by myself, a lone alpha. I couldn’t have joined another pack.”

“Started your own. You teeth still work, don’t they? And obviously your uterus does.”

Laura rolls her eyes. “Please, Uncle Peter, could you be more vulgar?”

“The vulgarity is joining them over us. How could you let one breed you without even _telling_ him what you are? What’s he going to do when his kid sprouts fur, Laura? And what about when we find Derek? Are you going to take a traumatized werewolf with you on your weekends in the Hamptons?”

“Derek is priority. You’ll give up your vengeance and I’ll ruin my marriage, if that’s what it takes. He’s pack.” She turns to Stiles who had no idea they even knew he was there. “So are you, if you want to be.”

“Um,” Stiles says, because it sounds dangerous. But maybe dangerous is just what Beacon Hills needs. 

“You’d be family,” Laura says. “We’d protect you, no matter what. I’ll even turn you, once we find Derek.” Stiles thinks he’s seen this PSA: something about not joining gangs and doing drugs. Then again, he was the only child of a widower with no surviving relatives. He could use more family, even if it was the monster movie type.

***

“So is this the infamous Scott? I expected him to be a little less … pale. Not that you’re not adorable, honey, because that nose is too cute. But I thought you said he was Mexican?” Kate Argent says. Her voice is low and throaty, dripping with sarcasm and simultaneously brash and blase. Stiles tries to tell himself that he wouldn’t like her even if he didn’t know that she murdered most of Peter and Laura’s family, but she’s hot and witty and willing to indulge - all qualities that Stiles is drawn to like a moth to a flame.

Allison smiles, laughing a little in that stupidly perfect way of hers that lets him know that she’s not mocking him for the suggestion that someone like Stiles could ever land a girl like her. “Oh, no. This is Stiles. He’s Scott’s best friend. We’re helping each other on that history project I told you about.”

“Really?” She manages to sound both doubtful and bored with just one raise of the eyebrow. “So when am I going to meet your boyfriend?”

Allison blushes. “Later. Maybe you can come to one of the lacrosse games? Without dad? Scott broke his arm, so he’s not playing, but I’m sure he’s really good.” Oh, poor Allison, if she thinks Scott can score a goal without tripping over himself, she’s in for a disappointment. “Stiles is on the team, though. And Scott could sit with us.”

“Sure thing, sweetpea,” Kate says, indulgently, ruffling Allison’s hair like she’s not a psycho killer. “Though I _am_ a little curious why you’re _studying_ with your boyfriend’s friend and not the boyfriend himself.”

Allison winces. “Scott and I don’t exactly get a lot _done_.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and Kate chuckles. 

“And he finished his essay already,” Allison continues. His great-grandfather was a lieutenant at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Stiles helped me find out more about le Bete, like you said, and I’m helping him because dad has all those books on the Romani. That’s his mom’s family.”

Kate’s attention snaps to Stiles - taking the bait, just as Peter predicted. “Really? Those are your grandpa’s books. He taught us a lot about it. Maybe I can help.”

Stiles keeps using the information-locating spell Peter helped him find until Kate notices that books keep falling open to exactly the page Stiles needs.

The avarice in her gaze is terrifying.

***

It doesn’t take long for Kate to confess her secret to Allison and Stiles. It’s almost pathetic how easy she is to manipulate, considering the clever monster Peter and Laura make her out to be.

What does take skill is convincingly containing his rage when she flings open the door to her Oregon safehouse and Stiles finally gets to see Derek Hale. He looks nothing like the smiling kid in muddy lacrosse gear in the old yearbook photos Stiles looked up. He doesn’t look even vaguely human, which Stiles supposes is the object of this lesson. Stiles has seen Peter’s wolf form, so he doesn’t gasp in horror like Allison, but it’s a close call. With Peter, the beast is leashed; there is intelligence in his gaze and intention in his movement. Derek has the same transformation and the same glowing blue eyes, but the way he huddles into the far corner of small house’s main room and the way his wary gaze follows Kate reminds Stiles more of a beaten dog than a person.

“Hello, Sweetie,” Kate greats, practically skipping up to him and lifting him out of his fearful crouch by the chin. “Did you miss me?”

She moves his head into a nod when all he seems interested in doing is averting his eyes and going boneless. “Der Bear, we have guests. This is Allison and Stiles and they are the future of our craft. Can you be a good boy and show them those incisors? Show them what a handsome rabid beast you are.”

Derek lets her open his mouth and point out his teeth. Stiles wonders why the hell he doesn’t just bite her finger off. He’s not physically restrained in any way. Even so starved that his spine is a corrugated ridge down back, his skin pale and bruised-looking, he could probably kill all three of them. Stiles knows better than to underestimate the Were’s strength, considering that Peter was bench-pressing Stiles’s Jeep a day after he’d stood up for the first time in six years and Laura had used her claws to slice open a cow femur because werewolf pregnancy cravings apparently include strawberry ice cream topped with pickles and marrow.

Kate pushes the wolf away from her and he stumbles, though the shove was more of a suggestion than actual force. “Come on, kiddos, don’t be shy. I’ve domesticated this one. He really won’t bite.”

Allison hangs back by the door. She’s dressed in black, crossbow in hand, but her arms are wrapped around her waist and her stance is bashful. Stiles is grateful because it means that he can solidify his role as the trusted disciple. He strides steadily forward, all swagger.

Then Derek does the unexpected. He seems to take a sniff of the air and then he howls, charging at Stiles. Kate produces what looks like a cattle prod out of nowhere, but it’s too late. Stiles throws up his hands and fire springs out of his palms. Derek drops to the floor in a whimper.

“Oh, Derry, do you not like the witch? I bet he reeks of power. It’s too bad, you’ve been so well behaved. I haven’t gotten to use this in ages.” She jams the cattle prod into the wolf’s side, making him writhe and moan.

Then there’s a whimper. All three pairs of eyes snap to the doorway, where a young girl is standing in ratty pink sweatpants and a yellow princess dress. She has dark wavy hair and eyes that flash from green to yellow before she rubs the sleep out of them. “Daddy?” she asks. “I heard you. Are you hurt?” Derek only has the strength to shake his head, but the girl is already distracted, running full tilt for Kate. “Mommy, Mommy, you’re home!”

Stiles stops wondering why Derek hasn’t ripped his captor’s throat out.

***

“Now, you’ve seen the electric fence and the security cameras, but most importantly, the house is made from a helpful little tree called mountain ash. Get a witch to bless a barrier of the stuff and a wolf won’t be able to cross it,” Kate smirks. “But it’s not the ultimate line of defense.”

Allison is barely keeping it together. Her gaze is far off and she’s sniffling from holding in the tears. The only reason Kate doesn’t notice is because Allison is walking behind her as they spread fertilizer over a field of purple flowers that surround the house like a moat. 

“Wolfsbane, right?” Stiles asks.

“Wow, did I luck out finding you, kiddo. Smart, powerful _and_ I expect you’ll grow into those shoulders someday soon. This is a particular variety - bred for pollen. It’s great in bullets, but see that slight haze as we walk through it? Don’t worry, the pollen is only toxic to the beasts, but don’t eat any of the stuff; that’ll kill you too. Some idiots down in Texas thought if they saturate their blood it would keep them from being bitten. Let’s just say it didn’t go the way they’d planned. Now, a healthy adult could make it through a field like this and recover from the burns and the lung damage, but a cub.... They may be monsters, but the instinct to protect their pack, their family and _especially_ their young, that it’s almost … magic.”

“But isn’t she--” Allison starts, but subsides.

“Isn’t she what, Allison? Speak up. It’s just your Aunt Kate and your friend who knows almost as little as you do. Now’s the time to ask all the stupid questions.”

“It’s nothing,” Allison replies, looking down at one of the flowers she’s twirling in her hand.

Kate takes it from her and pins it behind Allison’s ear, moving into her space without a care for the small flinch Allison can’t hold back. “No, sweetheart, speak up. I’m a big girl. I can take it. Did you want to ask if she’s really mine? Or maybe you’re wondering how I stomached letting one of them fuck me? Having one grow inside me? Maybe you look at Derek and you think: how dangerous could they really be? The thing is, he’s not a little lost puppy who followed me home. He’s here because I’m good at what I do and I’m willing to sacrifice everything to do it. It wasn’t easy, letting that monster sweat all over me, but now it’s caged and I’m still here and more powerful for it.”

Kate pulls off her tight black turtleneck, revealing long ugly scars across her stomach and back, a bite mark on her shoulder, and a slash running from her neck to her elbow, which she points to. “The pathetic creature you saw in there gave me this when I was seven months pregnant with his cub. And the bite mark? The first time we had sex. The rest were during hunts. They’ll slice you open and spill your guts or put those incisors deep in your jugular. They’re dangerous. Never doubt it.”

“If he’s so dangerous,” Stiles says, “why didn’t you kill him?”

Kate smirks. “First of all, where would be the challenge in that? And now that I have a docile pet all my own, I’m practically invaluable to the cause. Without my little puppy who knows how many hunters would have died testing new weapons on acting on false information.”

Stiles feels the power build in him, an explosion raging for an outlet, but Peter had cautioned him: they’ve been playing fast and loose with his magic. He needs to be sparing or risk losing control entirely.

Stiles almost jumps when Allison’s clammy palm slips into his.

***

While Kate is off doing target practice in the woods with Allison, Stiles is left alone with the wolves. Derek has stayed huddled in a corner with his daughter, Cassie, sitting in his lap as she colors in a new book that Kate had brought with her. Derek’s eyes flick up to check on Stiles every few seconds, as though he expects to be attacked any moment. Stiles realizes that he probably smells his family on Stiles and assumes that Stiles, as a hunter, has killed or imprisoned them.

Stiles is wondering how he can let Derek know that this isn’t the case when Cassie presents him with the opportunity. 

“Come color with us, Mr. Stiles!” she orders with a gap-toothed smile.

Derek flinches, but doesn’t say anything as Stiles gets dragged towards him by his enthusiastic daughter. Stiles presses himself against Derek’s side when he realizes that Derek has stuffed himself into the blind spot beneath the security camera.

Stiles pulls out a red crayon and writes over a picture of a cartoon bear: _I’m not a hunter. Peter and Laura sent me to look for you._

Derek just stares at the message in disbelief. Then he starts shaking. Stiles wraps an arm around him almost reflexively. Tears are streaming down Derek’s face, but he doesn’t make a sound, even motions for Cassie to keep quiet when she notices.

_We’ll figure out how to get you and Cassie out of here_

Derek nods, letting Stiles cradle his skeletal frame against his side and stroke his fingers through long greasy hair. 

Together they cover all of Stiles’s writings in more crayon until it looks like the cartoon bear has bled red all over the page.

***

“I’ll kill her,” Laura spits as she paces --prowls really-- across the length of the suite’s sitting room. “I’ll gut her and let her watch me play with her insides.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Now who’s being dramatic?” he complains. “Kate Argent will gets what’s coming to her, but you can’t be the one to do it.”

“Why the hell not? I’m the alpha!”

Peter eyes her stomach pointedly. 

“I don’t care! She’s been experimenting on my baby brother, torturing him while holding my niece whom I’ve never met hostage. How old did you say the girl was, Stiles? She _raped_ him when he was sixteen!”

Stiles wants to protest that _he’s_ sixteen and pretty sure that getting to sex up a hot older woman would hardly count as rape. Peter beats him to it. “I doubt Derek is entirely blameless when it comes to that. How do you think he managed to escape the fire? How do you think she knew exactly when and how to slaughter us?”

Laura has Peter pinned to the floor, claws to his neck, before Stiles can even blink. He takes a step back, suddenly realizing how dangerous one of these people can be, even if they are still _people_. “He was a child,” Laura spits. “She used him in the most horrific way possible. She deserves to die.”

“I’m not suggesting otherwise, but either we wait until you’ve pupped or we find a way to do it without your involvement. Derek needs our help, but not as much as the child needs you.”

Laura pulls off with a growl. “And how do you suggest we help Derek without setting the entire hunting community against us? My child will be in danger no matter what.”

“Not if you leave the cub with your _human_. Derek has survived six years. He can wait a few months.”

“I’m not doing that, Uncle. Derek has suffered enough because I didn’t think to look for him. There’s no plan better than killing Kate and rescuing Derek.”

Peter stares at her for a moment before Stiles interrupts. “Actually,” Stiles offers smugly, “this human has an idea.”

***

Peter stands up and leaves the second Stiles pulls Allison through the door. Laura looks wary, but she stands and shakes Allison’s hand anyway.

“Allison,” Stiles says. “This is Laura Hale. She’s Derek’s sister.”

“Is she a--”

“She’s a werewolf, too,” Stiles nods. “But that’s not all she is. She has a human husband and a job and a mortgage.”

“Actually, we own our loft,” Laura corrects with a stiff smile. Stiles wonders, briefly, if this was a mistake, considering how tense the alpha is, not to mention Peter’s disappearing act.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Allison replies, all wide brown eyes and dimples. Stiles dares Laura not to like her. “I, um,” she tucks her hair behind her ear shyly. It’s unremittingly adorable. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“Why? Is it your fault?” Laura answers archly. 

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Calm it, she-wolf, Allison is going to help us.”

“Stiles, she’s a hunter.”

“And a good person!” Stiles shouts.

He’s about to rant about wolves and their stupid paranoia, when Allison puts a strong, restraining hand on his arm, kneeling before where Laura is sitting and clasping the other woman’s hands in hers. “What Kate has done to you brother is wrong and there’s no better argument against being a hunter than the fact that she doesn’t even know how wrong it is.”

Laura nods, but she’s still scowling. “You do know that if she fights us, we may have no choice but to kill her.”

Allison bites her lip, but eventually nods. “She’s the one who started this. You should do what you have to.”

Laura stands then, her eyes flashing red and her teeth extending. She’s restrained herself from shifting in front of Stiles - something about too many changes being bad for the baby. “Don’t mistake this for anything but what it is. Kate didn’t start anything. As long as there have been wolves in the world, there have been those who would protect humanity. They are not without cause. We are as capable of evil as a human and ten times as powerful. Maybe nobody should have this kind of power.” She traces a claw across the pale skin of Allison’s throat, but Allison stands her ground without a flinch. “There have been crimes against innocents on both sides. It isn’t a feud or a vendetta. It’s a war and war is a dirty business.”

Allison steps into the threat, her eyes fathomless and steady. “I understand.”

***

Kate drives Allison and Stiles back to the cabin the following weekend under the guise of taking them hunting. Stiles has no idea what his dad must think about his newfound friendship with his best friend’s girlfriend, but he’s been so preoccupied with work that he’s probably happy to have Stiles out of his hair. Some idiot decided that there would actually be money in robbing a video store and somehow botched it enough to end up in murder. Stiles can’t help but be a little annoyed that it preoccupies his dad so much that he doesn’t even stop to question what a horrible idea it is to let Stiles do anything with a crossbow.

“Okay, kiddos, we have a simple mission this time. A friend of mine sent a special new toy for us to try on our subject. Now, the little princess would become unruly if she saw what we’re going to do to her daddy, so the two of you are going to watch her while I take him out of her hearing range, got it?”

Stiles and Allison both nod, carefully exchanging a look. This is looking to be much easier than they anticipated. 

Derek must be able to sense the docket of the day, because the second they enter the cabin, he’s kneeling at Kate’s feet, offering his hands for the wolfsbane coated shackles she’s twirling around her fingers. She pats his head. “Good boy.”

Stiles goes straight to Cassie and scoops her up so that she can bury her head in his shoulder and let his scent overpower the fear that he’s sure her father is giving off.

After Kate has snapped a collar around Derek’s neck and dragged him out through the field of wolfsbane, Stiles and Allison wait for what seems like the longest five minutes of Stiles’s life before she grabs her crossbow and darts out the door. 

Stiles pulls Cassie into the corner under the camera and tries to distract her with a story. He’s lucky that her father was locked in a cabin in the woods before he saw Ratatouille. 

***

Stiles has just reached the part where Remmy agrees to help Linguini become a chef when Cassie stiffens in his lap, whimpering, “Daddy?”

Stiles stands up to investigate without letting the squirming girl out of his arms. Once he throws the door open he finds Allison struggling to hold onto Derek, who is bleeding all over his ratty jeans as he tries to get to the beginning of the wolfsbane field. 

“Stop!” Stiles commands, surprised when Derek stops, wide-eyed, and obeys. “Derek, we’ll get her out. Don’t hurt yourself any more.”

Derek nods, collapsing down onto his knees and hanging his head.

It’s a ridiculous solution, but Stiles just pulls out one of those large-sized ziplock bags for clothes storage and makes Cassie get inside it before he runs through the field of wolfsbane with the bag over his shoulder like a potato sack. After that, a well placed arrow to the electric fence control box and a fireball to the house itself completes the escape.

Or it would have if when Allison and Stiles returned to load Kate into the car she just had an arrow through her calf instead of a slit throat. 

***

Allison holds it together until after Laura and Derek’s tearful reunion. Only after they’re locked in the hotel’s bathroom, getting Derek cleaned up, do the tears start flowing. “She did horrible things,” Allison says. Her eyes are wet, but not a sob emerges. “She probably deserved it.”

“But she was your family,” Stiles says, because he knows how precious that is. He pets the sleeping child in his lap.

“I never knew. All those awful things she did. She was the cool Aunt who brought me presents from around the world and didn’t treat me like a child.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

Allison’s jaw tenses. “No, I didn’t. But someone did. She was incapacitated. She wasn’t a threat.”

Stiles knows exactly who did it. In a way, he’s always known, from the moment those cool blue eyes grew life and consciousness. He thinks about what Laura said: how there are no innocent parties in this war. Now Stiles and Allison are guilty too.

They sit in silence until the bathroom door opens with a hit of billowing steam. Derek is wearing a pair of Peter’s sweatpants that hang loosely off his bony hips. Laura has bandaged the gunshot wound on his chest, which already appears to be on the mend. His long hair has been buzzed off and he’s clean-shaven. Stiles cannot believe how utterly he failed to notice that Derek is a very attractive man. He has high cheekbones and a narrow, but defined jawline and the most gorgeous green eyes that Stiles has ever seen. He makes his way over to the couch where Stiles is sitting with Cassie and curls up against his side, with his head against Stiles’s chest and a hand in his daughter’s hair.

Laura looks troubled by the attachment, but she doesn’t say anything. Stiles is too flabbergasted to move.

***

Stiles wakes up to small fingers poking him in the cheek. 

He groans and rolls over, but then one of the small fingers ends up in his ear. 

“Gaaaah!” he shouts, flinging himself to a sitting position and blinking owlishly at a tiny little girl with yellow eyes and sideburns to in no way match the purple unicorn pajamas she’s wearing.

“Mr. Stiles,” Cassie says, shifting back expertly. “You’re awake!”

“I’m awake,” Stiles replies, casting around to figure out how in the hell she even got here and finding the answer wearing a stolen maternity blouse and sleeping curled up in the corner.

“That’s a good look for you,” Stiles says to Derek, who doesn’t stir. In fact, Stiles’s heartbeat goes crazy when he realizes how still and silent Derek is. Looking emaciated like that, it’s completely possible that he’s dropped dead in his sleep.

“He’s not awake, silly,” Cassie informs him, ignoring Stiles’s sigh of relief. “I’m hungry. Make me breakfast?”

Stiles wonders how Cassie could be demanding breakfast when Derek looks like a POW or a walking poster for humanitarian aid, but then he realizes the depth of Kate Argent’s cruelty - give them just enough food for Cassie and see how much Derek would voluntarily starve himself in order to provide for her.

“Stay here and I need you to be quiet, okay?”

“Like when Mommy’s mad and Daddy says I have to be invisible.”

Stiles feels almost a physical tug at his heart. “Yeah, kiddo, like that.”

Cassie nods, but it’s too late, because Dad is already knocking loudly on the door, yelling, “Stiles, what am I going to have to do to force you to go to school?”

This finally wakes Derek, who immediately transforms into a snarling, growling wolfy mess, holding onto Cassie and getting between Stiles and the door. Stiles shoves him off and hopes he remembers enough about humans to recognize the finger to the lips sign of shut the fuck up. 

“Did you just _growl_ at me?” comes Dad’s exasperated drawl.

“No?” Stiles is indescribably glad that he’d made his dad read all those parenting articles about giving your child their own space and not barging in without permission. At the time it had mostly been about not wanting to expose his sparkly purple butt plug and the gay porn to match rather than harboring a missing person and a werechild. 

“Remind me again when this grumpy teenage phase going to be over.”

“Never, if I can help it,” Stiles replies, opening the door, but blocking the rest of the room from view. “Go ahead to work, I promise I’m up.”

“Okay.” Dad looks skeptical, but he relents. “You sure are spending a lot of time with that Argent girl. Staying up late,” he tosses over his shoulder.

“Allison is dating _Scott_ ,” Stiles replies. “She just wants a hiking buddy and Scott can’t really with the, you know.” He flails in a way that he hopes describes asthma.

“Just be careful. Scott has been a good friend to you and--”

“Yeah, yeah, dad, bros before hoes. I got it. Now, get out of here. You’re gonna be late for work.”

“It think that’s my line.”

Stiles closes the door before they can get into it more and he, Derek and Cassie all sit in tense silence until they hear the cruiser pull out of the driveway.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing here?”

Derek shrugs and still won’t answer even after a few nudges and a poke. 

“Fine. Be a creeperwolf. I’m calling your sister to come get you two and then, my dad’s right. I have to go to school.”

***

“Hey, Scott, have you seen Allison?” He hasn’t seen much of his best friend recently and he wishes he had more time to spend with him now, but this is urgent. It’s even urgent enough for him to turn down an offer to sit with Lydia Martin when she didn’t know where Allison was.

“She’s not with you?” Scott asks.

“I wouldn’t be looking for her if she was.”

“Stiles, you spend more time with her than I do and she’s my girlfriend. If I didn’t trust you two so much I’d be worried, dude.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Scott looks a little suspicious, but then he seems to decide against it and grins. “I know. I just wonder what you two are up to that doesn’t include me. I mean, my birthday’s not for another five months.”

Stiles bites his lip. On one hand, it’s not exactly his secret to tell. On the other hand, Scott is Stiles’s best friend and Stiles hates lying to him.

Stiles pulls Scott into the nearest empty classroom and then lights up a small fireball. He almost sets some of the chemistry stores on fire, but it’s worth it for the dumbfounded look on his best friend’s face.

Scott just stands there with that amazed, wide-eyed expression - the one that has half their teachers convinced that Scott is an idiot when he’s anything but.

“That was a fireball, dude! Show a little enthusiasm.”

“I am!” Scott protests. “Just, how in the hell did you do that? Are you and Allison like sneaking off to entertain at kids birthday parties on weekends?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “This is real magic, Scott. It’s not rabbits and sawing the lady in half slight of hand. It’s like full-on Harry Potter levels of awesomeness and I just happen to be a mage or a spark or whatever.”

“And Allison is, too?” Scott looks so sad, being left out.

“No, Allison is like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only if Buffy had a crossbow and was slaying werewolves and was _way_ more morally ambiguous.”

“Werewolves? Is this like a World of Warcraft thing? Because I know I always put it off, but if Allison plays too, maybe--”

“It is so much better than WoW, Scott. Werewolves are _real_. I had one in my room this morning.” At Scott’s skeptical look, Stiles insists, “I’m not crazy. A lot is going on right now, but as soon as everyone’s settled, I’ll introduce you. Just, um, even if you think I’m totally nuts, don’t tell anyone until then, okay?”

“Okay,” Scott says slowly. He’ll probably ask Allison about it the second he sees her.

***

As soon as Stiles arrives at the hotel room, Derek’s head pops up over the back of the couch, not smiling exactly, but looking eager. Cassie, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate to scream “Mr. Stiles!” launching herself out of Peter’s lap in a flying leap that nearly causes Stiles to drop the giant tupperware container of homemade chicken soup he’s brought over for Derek.

“Careful, little princess,” Stiles says. “You can’t slam into everyone as though they were a werewolf.” He pets her hair when she embraces him anyway.

“That’s actually one of the things I needed to discuss with you,” Laura opens. “Well,” she looks over at Derek, who glares back. “We have a lot of things to discuss.”

“Like what?” Stiles asks. “I mean, mission accomplished, right?”

Laura sighs. “I wish it were that simple.”

“What my beautiful niece is trying to say,” Peter interrupts, “is that we’ve been left with quite a few loose ends. Laura has a human husband who will be looking for his pregnant wife and despite my attempts at persuasion, she refuses to either kill him or tell him our little secret. However, we also have Derek, a traumatized werewolf who looks like a holocaust victim with control problems and an unregistered dependent, myself (a man magically healed and arisen from a coma), and a dead body.”

“Nobody knows about Kate or the cabin.” Stiles hates to say it, because it will be the end of the life of excitement and magic that he currently enjoys, but he knows what has to happen. “All three of you should move back to New York and never look back.”

Derek lets out a pathetic whine and pulls himself off the couch to attach himself to Stiles’s side. He nuzzles at Stiles’s neck like Stiles witnessed him do to his daughter several times.

“Christ, Derek,” Laura spits. “He’s a teenager, not your childhood teddy bear. You can’t bring him with you.”

Derek just presses closer. It’s involuntary for Stiles to stroke his hair the way he did for Cassie. It should feel weird to be treating an adult man this way, but Stiles wonders how much of an adult man Derek actually is on the inside. He was taken at sixteen - how adult could he be?

“Why me, though? The two of you are family.”

“You rescued him,” Laura says simply. “In Derek’s world, we abandoned him with that woman for six years.”

“But you didn’t know!”

“I did know! I’m alpha. I should have known he was still alive. If I had been any kind of alpha, I would have known.”

Stiles knows that the right thing to do would be to comfort her and tell her that there’s nothing she could have done, because she was young and lost and afraid, but then he feels the tremor of Derek cowering at his side. Laura moved to New York, got married, wears Prada, has a baby and has the luxury to turn her back on being alpha while Derek feared for his life, was imprisoned in a cabin in the woods where he was raped and forced to have a child with a woman who got off on torturing him. It’s time Derek had someone in his corner.

“That’s in the past,” Stiles says. “The important thing is what we do for Derek and Cassie now.” He looks down at Derek and sighs, hating that the word ‘feral’ is what first comes to mind. “There’s not much I can do if he’s going to be wolfing out all the time. But if he can manage to be just another traumatized human, my dad has been making noise about renting out our basement unit.”

“I can do it,” Derek whispers, clinging tight. “She--” he gulps his fears down. “Kate didn’t want me teaching Cassie bad habits. I’m good at staying normal when she tells me. I’ll keep it hidden. For you.”

“Okay,” Stiles sighs, rubbing the back of Derek’s neck when he collapses forward in relief. “I’ll ask my dad about it,” he turns to Laura. “But you leave him out of this stuff. Nobody tells him and you still owe me big time. And not just money, but a big favor, too.”

Laura nods docily, but Peter is grinning like a loon. 

“Well played, Stiles,” he replies. “Well played.”

***

Dad is not an easy sell. Stiles may have overplayed his hand, just slightly. They hadn’t really been talking about renting the unit other than to occasionally acknowledge the fact that they had way more room than the two of them needed, so Dad was understandably shocked to find Stiles’s massive donation pile and Stiles covered in dust bunnies as he came up and down the stairs. 

“Spring cleaning?” he asks, with his patented exasperated parent eyebrows. 

“Actually, I found us a renter, so I’m cleaning things out.”

“ _You_ found a renter. You, my sixteen-year-old son, whose name is not on the lease  
and doesn’t know a damned thing about contracts and housing laws.”

“It’s called the internet, Dad, and, no, I didn’t find him through craigslist. Remember how you had me working that horrible after school job at the nursing home?”

“ _Had?_ Christ, Stiles, did you get fired already?”

“No, I actually got promoted. One of my guys. Remember Peter? I told you about him. Nicest patient ever. Burn victim. Sarcastic. Toats my fav.”

“I remember Peter Hale being in a coma, yes.”

“Well, under my expert care, he got better. His niece flew in from New York and wanted to move him out. Hired me as a private nurse.”

“So you want to turn our basement unit into a nursing home.”

“Naw, Dad, morbid much? Peter’s staying with Laura. It’s Laura’s brother and his daughter who need a place to stay.”

“Laura’s brother. Derek Hale? Derek Hale, died in an electrical fire, Derek Hale?”

Shit. Stiles hadn’t counted on his dad actually remembering the details of the case he worked six years ago. “Turns out Derek wasn’t as dead as everyone thought.”

“Stiles, he was reported dead and never let anyone know otherwise. He could have started the fire for all we know. Christ.”

“Language, dad. And he didn’t. The fire was arson. The arsonist had Derek imprisoned for the past six years until she heard about Peter getting better and he managed to escape. You’ll see him, Dad. He’s a mess and he needs help.”

“We need to reopen the investigation. He needs to give a statement. He probably needs counselling, Stiles. You can’t just--”

“Meet him, Dad. Meet him and you’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was largely a writing experiment in doing exposition as tightly as possible. I don't really know where to take the story from here and have been stalled on it for a long time, so here's hoping that posting what I have gives me some inspiration.


End file.
